Regis Resources Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Regis Resources quarterly briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr Jim Beyer, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Harmony, and thanks, everybody, for joining us on the call this morning. for the Regis Resources March 2024 quarterly update. Today, I'm joined by our Chief Operating Officer, Michael Holmes, and our Chief Financial Officer, Anthony Rakiki. And also, welcome to the table and to the team, our Head of Investor Relations and External Affairs, Jeff Sansom. To start with, at Regis, our imperative is to produce profitable ounces safely. And at the end of the quarter, I'm really pleased to say that a key safety indicator has continued to trend in the right direction. And we've achieved our lowest LTIFR, which is the lost time injury frequency rate. We've achieved the lowest on record at 0.34. Now, of course, I would note that while it's a great outcome and well done by the team, This is a journey with no end, and we'll keep working hard to make sure we keep this performance running. On to our operations and high-level financial metrics. Across the business, the quarter, and it should be no surprise that our production was impacted by the heavy and protracted weather events within the Western Goldfields region. Anecdotally, nearly a year's worth of rain fell over parts of WA and the Goldfields in March, And our teams did exceptionally well to respond and to manage that deluge and to deliver production for the quarter at 90,600 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $2,735 an ounce. Now, I would note across our business, $234 per ounce of that is non-cash. And Anthony will talk some more on this shortly. Look, Michael will discuss the specifics of the weather events in a moment as well. But as a general thematic, as a result of the weather and the disruptions it caused, we saw reduced mining rates and a higher proportion of processed stockpiles. So basically, our production for the quarter was always going to be softer as we'd highlighted or identified, be softer than the prior quarters as we'd flagged, but then this was amplified by the weather and this impact artificially pushed up our AISC, our all-in-sustaining costs, unit costs. Naturally, as we revert to normal operations and production, we will see our costs drift back towards the first half of this year's levels to the tune that we will still comfortably fit within our FY24 production cost and guidance ranges. Look, I would note realistically that we're likely to see a hangover of this quarter in FY24 production and AISC, both of which will be within our guidance ranges. albeit production with a bit more accurate understanding of the weather events now. We see production below the midpoint of guidance and conversely all in sustaining at the top end. On the significant positives for the quarter, like us, I'm sure that most of you will have been watching as the gold prices continue to climb. From the beginning of January to the end of March, the gold prices increased by nearly of the order of $400 an ounce, Aussie. which for Regis has meant that at the end of the quarter, selling 100% of our gold into the spot market means we've seen a cash build of $31 million, even in these trying times. Having this full leverage of the gold price is a positive swing of something like $40 million versus how we would have been sitting had we not bought out the hedges position back in December. And just in case you're not aware, we did buy out our hedge book and we are now fully unhedged. Now, putting all of that together, i.e. our production lifting, our oil and sustaining costs reducing and a stronger gold price, we can expect to see some solid improvements in our cash generation going forward. We also made some good progress on our value growth area, but I'll cover a bit more of that towards the end of the call. I'd now like to hand over to Michael, who will provide some more information on the operational performance.

Thanks Jim and good morning everyone. For the operations, as Jim mentioned, the regional wet weather that occurred primarily during March has impacted our quarter three gold production. At Duketon North and South, the weather event temporarily washed out several access routes to site, which meant access for road freight and access across the sites via haul roads was challenged. The impact of mining and processing activities, however, had limited disruptions. During the quarter, Jigden South produced the lion's share of gold with 59,017 ounces at an all-in-sustaining cost of $2,435 an ounce. We continued mining at Garden Well Stage 6, and during the quarter, Ben Hur and Russell's Find opened pits. Both commenced commercial production. With Ben Hur and Russell's find in commercial production, the growth capital pre-stripping activity ceased, resulting in a lower growth capital spend of $14 million for the quarter. Duke and South will continue to produce ore from Garden Well, Ben Hur and Russell's find in quarter four. The Garden Well underground performed to expectations as we resolved the issues that impacted our development metres in the last quarter, and are comfortable that the mine will continue at that circa 3,000 metres per quarter, in line with historical performance. Looking to the quarter ahead, Duketon South operations, we now have sufficient access to the ore at Ben Hur and Russell's Fine, so we will see margins improve with stronger cash generated. At Duketon North, production was 8,466 ounces at an oil and sustaining cost of $4,054 per ounce. During the quarter, mining at Duke and North centred around uncovering the ironed haven ore and mining the Gloucester open pit at lower rates due to the weather impacts. Our mill throughput and recoveries were down on the prior quarter with the majority of ore from Gloucester pits and the stockpiles driving the oil and sustaining cost of $4,054. Of this, nearly $500 an ounce was the non-cash impact of processing stockpiled ore. In quarter four, we expect costs will come down to similar levels to that in the first half as we start to feed the softer iron ore for the final quarter before transitioning to care and maintenance. As for Tropicana and as announced in our release on the 18th of March, Tropicana bore the brunt of these rainfall events. The predominant impact on Tropicana was to the road infrastructure and supply access. With 310 millimetres of rain over three days, roads to the site were underwater, which cut access, preventing the supplies of diesel and other consumables. Processing was suspended from 22 March to 1 April, and the plant was brought back at full production through foot by 5 April. Open-pit mining was either closed or significantly restricted over a period of around five weeks. Open-pit mining has recommenced in early April, whereas the underground mining has been impacted for only a few days. The net results of these impacts was that Tropagana produced 23,200 ounces at an oil and sustaining cost of $2,887 per ounce, with the underground producing most of those ounces. Topatana is now back up and running, and production is ramping back up to previous production rates, and we expect quarter four to be a much stronger quarter. Across Duketon, we have access to war, and all our major planned maintenance activities are now complete. I will now hand over to Anthony, who will discuss the quarterly financials.